From Powells.com

Staff Pick

We tend to view plants as pretty but passive organisms. Mabey's passionate ode to the plant world combines history, science, and art to illuminate the resilience and importance of an underappreciated life form. This is nature writing at its finest: eloquent, revealing, and entertaining. Recommended By Renee P., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

“Richard Mabey is incapable of writing a tedious sentence.” —Anna Pavord, best-selling author of The Tulip

The Cabaret of Plants is a masterful,
globe-trotting exploration of the relationship between humans and the
kingdom of plants by the renowned naturalist Richard Mabey.

A rich, sweeping, and wonderfully readable work of botanical history, The Cabaret of Plants
explores dozens of plant species that for millennia have challenged our
imaginations, awoken our wonder, and upturned our ideas about history,
science, beauty, and belief. Going back to the beginnings of human
history, Mabey shows how flowers, trees, and plants have been central to
human experience not just as sources of food and medicine but as
objects of worship, actors in creation myths, and symbols of war and
peace, life and death.

Writing in a celebrated style that the Economist
calls “delightful and casually learned,” Mabey takes readers from the
Himalayas to Madagascar to the Amazon to our own backyards. He ranges
through the work of writers, artists, and scientists such as da Vinci,
Keats, Darwin, and van Gogh and across nearly 40,000 years of human
history: Ice Age images of plant life in ancient cave art and the
earliest representations of the Garden of Eden; Newton’s apple and
gravity, Priestley’s sprig of mint and photosynthesis, and Wordsworth’s
daffodils; the history of cultivated plants such as maize, ginseng, and
cotton; and the ways the sturdy oak became the symbol of British
nationhood and the giant sequoia came to epitomize the spirit of
America.

Complemented by dozens of full-color illustrations, The Cabaret of Plants
is the magnum opus of a great naturalist and an extraordinary
exploration of the deeply interwined history of humans and the natural
world.

Review

“In his inimitable style, naturalist Mabey incorporat[es] natural
history, travel writing, and mainstream botany into a text rich with
philosophy, poetry, and visual art [to] bring a sense of excitement and
vitality to his material…. He succeeds admirably.” Publishers Weekly

Review

“A delightfully accessible work of scholarship…. Mabey’s sensitive
approach not only succeeds in giving these incredibly vital beings their
just place in the story of life. It reminds us that, as we stare in the
maw of large-scale environmental change, we can learn the right lessons
from our relationship with plants and draw inspiration from their
incredible resilience.” Booklist, Starred review

About the Author

Richard Mabey is the author of Food for Free, Flora Britannica, and Weeds: In Defense of Nature’s Most Unloved Plants,
among other books. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he has
narrated popular BBC television and radio series and written for the
Guardian and Granta. He lives in Norfolk, England.